Though he may be famous for playing the iconic role of Biff Tannen in the “Back to the Future” trilogy, comedian and actor Tom Wilson describes himself quite differently than the towering bully who once tormented Marty McFly.

“Tom Wilson, the comedian, is a small, Asian woman who came from Thailand, but that’s a longer story than I think your readers want to get into,” Wilson said during a recent phone interview.

Wilson discovered a love for the arts in high school and, although he knew he wanted to pursue acting professionally, another genre of performance coupled with a little peer pressure, led him to the comedy club stage.

“When I was 18 and studying acting, a lot of my friends were doing stand up in New York City at the clubs and stuff but, at that time, I was God’s gift to the American theater,” he said. “I thought I was just going to do Shakespeare and be ever-so-artistic, but they were having a good time at the comedy clubs and they were making money, like $10 and a cheeseburger, and that really was very impressive to me.”

Tom Wilson

Wilson moved out to Los Angeles and got a job working at The Comedy Store in Hollywood; eventually finding himself opening for some of the biggest names in stand up at the time, including the legendary Richard Pryor.

In addition to regular opening gigs at the club, Wilson took a number of small television and film roles before landing his big break in the Robert Zemeckis time-traveling classic. Though he is recognized daily for the part of Biff, Wilson’s extensive resume has endeared him to a number of age groups.

“I do a lot of things that are sort of iconic, not the size of ‘Back to the Future,’ of course, but things like playing Coach Fredricks on ‘Freaks and Geeks’ familiarized me to a generation that is actually younger than the generation who would have seen the movie,” Wilson said. “And, the generation under that, like little kids now, would know me from doing voices on ‘SpongeBob SquarePants.’ So, if I’m at a barbeque or something, it really depends on the demographic of people there and what they know me for.”

As a voiceover actor, Wilson has found yet another outlet to fuel his creative juices.

“What used to happen in animation, years ago, was they would make the pictures and then actors would come in and have to time it out in order to match but now they’ve changed that and let the actors act out the script,” he said. “So, if I’m doing SpongeBob, for example, all the actors are in the room, all acting together, in order to make it as funny and organic with each other as possible. Then, they animate it to the funniest takes of the recording. It’s a really fun environment because all these people are there, trying to come together to make something really funny, which really works.”